The DMA ecommerce survey findings

April 5, 2008

At Extravision we keep up to date with the latest industry surveys and findings so that we can spot trends and make sure our customers are ahead of the game. The Direct Marketing Association recently published their fifth annual Ecommerce Survey, which for the first time first time includes a section on email marketing practices.

Extravision experts examine what this study says about current email marketing practices and what the trends might be in the coming year.

Overall the report demonstrates that direct marketers appear to be taking advantage of the cost savings, visibility and acquisition benefits of interactive marketing. The increased ability it gives them to reach new customers/segments in the market appears to be the most compelling reason for most respondents.

The key findings regarding email and email marketing were:

Email is the technology that companies are using the most with 96% of respondents citing it as the most popular and well used technology in their business.

The majority of respondents (two thirds) use -newsletters as part of the marketing mix

74% of respondents have built an in house email list with B2B marketers reporting that they have email addresses for 63.8% of their in-house customer data.

Over two thirds note that their sales increased in 2001 as a result of email marketing

Consumer marketers are now more likely to use email marketing rather than direct mail to drive traffic to their websites

More than 63% of companies found email marketing the most effective method for customer retention

In a correlation between percentage of budget spent and customer retention effectiveness email marketing was the strongest and also generated the most traffic to websites.

So, what does all of this mean?

It seems that of the companies that took part in the survey, the vast majority are starting to see real ROI from their email marketing campaigns. All reported that sales and lead generation was the most important criteria they used when evaluating the effectiveness of Internet related marketing activities.

Email marketing certainly seems to be doing the business on this score. Email campaigns however are not just being used to find new customers but also to retain old ones. Loyal customers are the holy grail of any business and email appears to be an extremely effective way to keep them close.

As marketers gain a better understanding of the ROI of an email campaign the trend looks to be that they are beginning to allocate more resources and more of their budget spend to email marketing campaigns. "It is not unusual for an email marketing campaign to generate at least three times the cost of the campaign in new business" says Alastair Campbell Sales Director of Extravision. "It therefore makes common sense if you've made more than 30,000 by spending 10,000 to re-invest some, or even all, of the 30,000 profit into further campaigns to make even more."

Overall it seems as if email marketing is working. As there was no category for email marketing last year it is hard to estimate growth but pound for pound it seems as if the marketers who took part in this survey are seeing a good return on investment and are getting value from using email marketing.

Further information can be found on the Direct Marketing Association website If you would like more information please email us at [email protected] or call +44 (0)161 817 2929